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Milanto - Log Day 9 - Decisions, Decisions... & a very wet blogger



So today was to be all about the decision of where to head in order to avoid a hole, which is developing bang on our intended path (hole = a place with confused wind, or no wind at all).

Should we head north like one or two other boats have, or head far south? This is all about studying forecasts and the trends that successive ones may, or may not, reveal. We are well and truly in the trade winds now, but within the trade wind channel, other weather systems develop, either pushing the channel south, or north, and placing holes, or at least different conditions where the channel would normally sit. Our modelling shows such a hole ahead in around 5 days. But things are far from certain, and successive forecasts are showing different stories each time, and very confused ones at that. As Keith put it, it's as though a child has drawn a succession of random arrows in this area on one day and then a different child, a different set of random arrows the following day. In short it's all a little unreliable.

We have finally decided its all too difficult and that we should do things in the manner of the third way, we will stick to where we are going for now, which is the centre ground and also the shortest route. Its known as the Great Circle as it uses the shortest route, the circumference of the Earth, which sometimes looks an odd route on plan in an Altas or map, as it looks counter intuitive.

We're hedging our bets, we plough on as we are, make quick ground directly toward St Lucia, and then hopefully be able to dart North or South when the forecast is more certain. Time will tell.

We have though had a really good day's sailing this afternoon. We are now on a broad reach, which I think should be renamed the 'yeehah' tack, as it is sailing at its most exhilarating. Wind comes over the side of the boat and with the sails adjusted accordingly, you scream along like a deranged swan during take off, and we have.

Its odd when you look out up top, over the waves, the occasional bird (what on earth are they doing all the way out here? They look as though they could be hanging out in Brighton for someone to drop a bag of chips). Nothing says - mid Atlantic here. It just says sea. The assumption at the back of your mind is: 'sailing along, but might call it a day soon and go in'. We are actually now 1,100 miles from dry land. We've sailed our first 1,000 miles.

As a team we've kept this sailing boat afloat and sailing, non stop 24 hours a day. Its ourfloating home, the place we eat, the place we sit, and the place we sleep. But its also the place we work, and man alive have we worked at times.

This brings us neatly back to where we started (a circular route we should avoid), the un-dead.

It was around 01.30, I had just taken the helm, and the clouds were on the very ominous looking side. OK so we didn't actually see a Zombie, but their handprints were all over it. A single massive black squall was making its way slowly toward the boat. We did our best to avoid it, but when it just looked like we'd escaped its grasp, the wind died to nothing and it reeled us in.

To say it rained would be like saying Heinz makes soup, they do incidentally, but probably not nearly as much compared to this cloud did rain. When the rain started, so did the wind, and it blew up to 30 knots and rained to frightening proportions. Once it had spat us out 20 minutes later the wind dropped to more manageable proportions and the rain just rained, for the next 2.5 hours.

So we remained unscathed from our brush with the un-dead, but we werecertainly shaken, which, on balance, is probably the best way around.


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